Mount Sinai accused of restricting gender-affirming care for youth

Patients, families, and elected officials are calling out Mount Sinai amid reports that the hospital has further restricted gender-affirming care for youth in the face of pressure from the Trump administration. Mount Sinai and some other providers have already faced scrutiny since early last year for allegedly canceling appointments for youth after President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling to restrict federal funds for providers offering gender-affirming care for individuals under the age of 19. But now advocates are saying the hospital is increasing restrictions after the Trump administration issued multiple proposed rules in December intended to comprehensively ban gender-affirming care for youth. Since those rules were proposed, multiple hospitals have taken action: In December, Bassett Healthcare's Gender Wellness Center at Susquehanna Family Practice in upstate Oneonta scrubbed information from its website and a spokesperson told Gay City News at the time that it was restricting gender-affirming care for minors, while NYU Langone announced the closure of its youth gender-affirming care program earlier this month, citing the "current regulatory environment." Among Mount Sinai's patients include Lorelei Crean, a trans rights activist who spoke at a rally on Feb. 19 about their own experience with that hospital over the last year. “I began attempting to get an appointment at the start of 2025, when I was still 17 years old,” Crean said, as reported by Gay City News. “My parents called Mount Sinai, attempting to get an appointment to discuss getting gender-affirming care. They told my dad they would call back by Friday. Every day of that first week, I would call home from school and excitedly ask my dad if they called. But they didn’t. Friday rolls around, no calls, so my dad calls back, and they say, ‘Next Friday,’ but they [didn’t call], and this continues for months and months and months, with Mount Sinai giving us the run-around again and again and again.” Meanwhile, multiple parents of trans youth told Gothamist similar stories of rejection from Mount Sinai. One parent who has a 16-year-old trans son told Gothamist that she and her husband were informed by Mount Sinai that “ not only were they no longer taking new [pediatric] patients, but they could not treat current patients." Others, according to Gothamist, said Mount Sinai halted gender-affirming care for youth last month. "Another sad, disappointing decision by a NYC hospital to cower to the Administration," Congressmember Jerrold Nadler of New York wrote in a post on X. "Mount Sinai must reverse this decision and continue caring for all New Yorkers — especially our vulnerable trans youth community." A spokesperson for Mount Sinai answered Gay City News' email but did not respond to a request for comment. New York City Health + Hospitals (H+H), which continues to advertise full gender-affirming care services at its Pride Health Centers, did not respond to multiple emails and voicemails from Gay City News regarding the status of gender-affirming care for youth at H+H locations. An individual who answered the phone at one of the H+H's multiple Pride Health Center, however, said gender-affirming care continues to be provided there.